[txcwpalpha]

I think you're drastically misunderstanding the issue here. Everyone knows how Messages works in regards to the switchoff between iMessage and SMS. It's not like it's some secret that the Messages app is capable of also sending SMS. The problem is that it's also not a secret that SMS is objectively a worse experience than iMessage, especially for group chats.

Why do you think the kids don't like it when a thread is green? Do you think that the kids just don't like the color green? That's not it. They don't like it because the thread being green is an indicator that nearly everything about the group chat experience is going to be worse. Messages will be drastically slower, they will have a higher failure rate, pics/videos sent over that chat will be lower quality, there will be no typing indicators or read receipts, there is no ability to label the chat, likes and other message indicators are more cluttering, etc.

It isn't just high school kids, either. I've seen people at work intentionally exclude android users on group chats because we needed fast responses from people and the 2-3 second delay each way on MMS (and that's best case. sometimes it can take minutes for a single message to go through, if it goes through at all) is intolerable when you're trying to have a fast paced conversation with many people. I've had my friend group (people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s) intentionally exclude android users because they were tired of always worrying if one of their MMSes wasn't actually received by everyone in the group (in groups with android users, MMS failures happened enough to have multiple ruined plans because some people in the group never got all the messages being sent).

This is not just a human problem. These people aren't excluding Android users just because they think blue is a cool color and they want to bully green people. They're doing it because there is a very clear technical issue with SMS where it is very lacking in features compared to iMessage. The colors just happen to be a very easy way to signal whether or not you will be using the superior iMessage or the inferior SMS/MMS.

[sixbrx]

Regarding the work-related messaging, sounds like neither iMessage nor SMS is suitable for the job, and one of the many cross platform full featured messaging apps should be used instead.